Buellton, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 13.9 miles southwest of Buellton, CA
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 13.9 miles southwest of Buellton, CA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.18 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 1.8 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Buellton, CA is the nearest named place, 13.9 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 34.46, -120.35. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
What 0.18 ft/yr means over time
Run 13.9 miles southwest of Buellton, CA's 0.18 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 5 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
How solid is this number
Averaging 79 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.14 ft/yr. This segment ranks 530 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Taholah, WA sits at national rank 276 for erosion (0.57 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 912 miles from here. 2.7 miles away, Buellton, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.13 ft/yr.
One address near Buellton: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.